So, I have a fascination with these two men. I've just finished my research paper, which was on the Lincoln assassination,and I think I did pretty well, even though I haven't gotten my grade yet. But really, I didn't write it as much for school as I did out of personal interest. Anyhow, I decided to post my paper. Drop me a comment...
John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Assassination
President Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, in a bloody and cowardly act of Confederate sympathizer and madman actor John Wilkes Booth. Or so the story goes. However, is this the real story of John Wilkes Booth? Was he really an insane actor who murdered the good president out of anger at losing the Civil War? Was it really a rash, hurried attack carried out by just one man? Many questions arise out of the Lincoln assassination, some of which are: who was John Wilkes Booth, what were his motives in assassinating Lincoln, who were his fellow conspirators, and what really happened in April 1865?
John Wilkes Booth was born in Harford County, Maryland, on May 10, 1838, to Junius Brutus Booth and Mary Anne Holmes. He was the ninth of ten children, only six of whom lived to adulthood. Junius Booth was a famous, though eccentric actor, who died when John Wilkes was just fourteen (Kauffman 83). Junius came to America with Mary Anne in 1821, “leaving behind…the wife and young son…deserted there” (Booth 4 of introduction). The two were not actually married until Junius divorced his first wife thirty years later. They lived and raised a family together in Maryland, and were married on John Wilkes’ thirteenth birthday.
John Wilkes was far from the “mad actor” many history books portray. He was his mother’s favorite child, a good student, and quite a popular man, both as an actor and with the ladies (Kaufmann 87, 91, 101). Booth was loved by many people. He was kind and affectionate toward his mother and sisters, and his next to final words were to “Tell my mother--tell my mother that I did it for my country--that I die for my country” (Kaufmann 320).
He worked hard at his school tasks, mastering them completely. He went to a prestigious military institute, where the concept of class was firmly impressed upon him. This may have been the beginning of his hatred of the slaves. His father and grandfather would sit and share a meal with an African person and think nothing of it, but John Wilkes could not stay in the same room with a slave (Kaufmann 93).
He played with his brothers and childhood friends, Mike O’Laughlen, a future conspirator, John Sleeper Clarke, who would marry Booth’s sister Asia, and others, putting on magic shows and theatre productions in their backyards with whatever props and set pieces they could find. His first real stage appearance was in Shakespeare’s Richard III, playing the role of “a hero who destroys a murderous tyrant” (Booth 5 of introduction).
Interestingly, his stage career was mostly focused on plays that justly killed or overthrew rulers. His social status, along with his great physical attractiveness and charming character, made sure that he was almost never in need of female companionship. He was adored by the ladies of Washington, and often received letters from adoring women, many of which he returned. At his death, five photographs of lady friends were found in his pockets, four were actresses, one a favorite acquaintance named Lucy Hale (Kaufmann 101, 322).
So, what caused Booth to assassinate President Lincoln? What drove him to commit the act that launched his name into history as a murderer, coward, and madman? Booth lived on the edge of two conflicting societies: the North and the South. Northern America was full of factories, theatre, and wealth. The South was poorer, but had good farming land; there were many plantations, with fields of crops planted, tended, and harvested by black slaves. Booth did not hate the North, he was born and raised there, but he saw the South as being oppressed by the government of the North, headed by Abraham Lincoln. Booth drafted a twenty-page speech on the secession in December 1860, which was only found long after his death. In it he says, “I am a northern man…I will not fight for disunion. But I will fight with all my heart and soul…for equal rights and justice to the South. As I would do for the North in the like position” (Booth 55). This speech is a fiery accusation of those people who would abolish the state-centered life in the both the North and the South and slave-dependent economy and society of the South. As Booth said,
…what should be done with such men…who not only would cry for a King, but endeavor to lead others in their views and spread their d--d opinions throughout the land. Now I call it treason to our common country, and it should not be alowed [sic]. I tell you that liberty of speech can be abused and should not be tolerated to the abuse thereof. Men have no right to entertain opinions which endanger the safety of the country. Such men who ^I^ call traitors and treason should be crushed ^stamped to death^ and not alowed [sic] to stalk abroad in any land. So deep is my hatred for such men that I could wish I had them in my grasp And I the power to crush. I’d grind them into dust!
(Booth 56)
Before the war, the North and South were almost two different countries. Fearing putting too much power in the federal government, the writers of the Constitution had distinguished between the rights and responsibilities of the federal government versus the individual state governments (Smith 24). The North supported a central government, while the South favored the states’ ability to nullify federal laws considered unconstitutional. The South objected more and more to the federal government’s “meddling” in state affairs, fearing that Washington was making laws favoring the North over the South (Smith 24). Great changes took place in the economies of both the North and South during the late eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries. The North changed from a land of farming and fishing to one of industry; immigrants flocked to the northern United States to find jobs in the plentiful factories (Smith 28). The South went from depending on exports of various crops for cash to producing cotton as more than half of all American exports. This dependence on cotton kept the South from becoming involved in the industry of the North (Smith 32). The main difference between workforce in the North and South were that the Northern workers were free, even to move west if they wished, but the Southern slaves were bound to their land (Smith 28). Most Southern slaveholders were afraid to let their slaves go free; some revolts caused fear of the slaves taking revenge on their former masters (Smith 50). The societies also changed a great deal. For instance, people from Virginia thought of themselves as Virginians, and those from Georgia thought of themselves as Georgians. It was not until after the Civil War that people from all states thought of themselves as Americans. Booth was against those who were “…continually preaching and crying. O we cannot govern for ourselves we aught to have a great centeral [sic] government” (Booth 56).
Who were the conspirators? Booth drew many people in his plans, and he even used people to do things, like deliver letters, that would involve them without their knowledge. He wove a thick web through Washington, Baltimore, New York, and Canada that secured him from betrayal by being able to blackmail anyone and everyone; no one could report him without fear of being arrested themselves (Kaufmann 176, 182-183).
David Herold was one of the younger conspirators, and Booth’s loyal companion in his post-assassination flight. He was only twenty-two at the time of the assassination and has been described as Booth’s “dog-like follower” (Leonard 37). Herold was born the sixth of ten children and grew up near the gates of Washington Navy Yard. He had a good education and studied pharmacy at Georgetown College and Rittenhouse Academy, an elite Washington school. He worked for a while, but became unemployed in the fall of 1864. “Considered to be immature for his age and even fundamentally unreliable…, Herold was nevertheless a sociable fellow with many friends. He was also an avid hunter who had spent a great deal of time as a youngster in the Maryland woods” (Leonard 37). He knew southern Maryland and its people very well, qualities that would later help him and Booth in their twelve-day post assassination flight. His job in the assassination was to be a guide to Lewis Powell, who was not familiar with the Washington area, but when he heard the screams coming from the Seward house he knew something was going wrong and rode away to tell Booth that the assassinations could not happen that night, simultaneously, as planned.
George Atzerodt was a German immigrant, known as “Port Tobacco” because of his work at the port ferrying spies and operatives across the Potomac. Before the war he worked with his brother making carriages; during the war he continued making carriages on his own (his brother had left the business), and he picked up the ferry job. One of the people who often used the ferry was John Surratt, Jr., who most likely introduced Atzerodt and Herold to Booth. He was assigned to the assassination of Vice President Andrew Johnson, but he did not go through with it. He went to Johnson’s hotel, armed, but decided to spend the evening drinking. He left the hotel and went to another Washington hotel, drank some more, then wandered about the city until 2:00, asked an acquaintance to let him stay at his house, and when the friend refused went back and checked in to the latter hotel.
Lewis Powell was much more than the attempted assassin of Secretary of State, William Seward. He has become the “mystery man” of the Lincoln assassination, especially since he was charged, tried, convicted, and hung as Lewis Payne. Lewis Payne went down in history, and Lewis Powell faded almost into extinction. He was the son of a Baptist preacher, the youngest son and sixth child in his family of ten children. He grew up in the deep south of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Three of the four Powell boys served in the war (the eldest died before the war), Lewis being the first to enlist. He joined the Confederacy in May 1861, with his two brothers not joining until September 1861 and May 1862. By the time he turned seventeen, Lewis had joined the Jasper (Hamilton) Blues, which later became Company I of the Second Florida Infantry, by persuading the authorities that he was nineteen years old (Owensby 11-12). He served until he was hospitalized for illness, but rejoined in June 1862 for the remainder of the war. He was injured, taken to an army hospital and kept as a prisoner of war and made a male nurse in the hospital, where he met Miss Margaret Branson, a young lady nurse and “avid secessionist” (Owensby 15-16) who helped him escape from the hospital. He joined the infamous group of Mosby’s Partisan Rangers, and while he was serving with Mosby he stayed with the Payne family, whose name he would later use as an alibi. He later stayed with the Branson family, who brought him deep into the Confederate underground, through which he met John Surratt, a contact that led him to the Surratt boarding house in Washington and ultimately John Wilkes Booth. After participating in Booth’s failed capture attempt, Powell went for a while to New York before returning to Washington. His part of the assassination plan was to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward. Powell went to Seward’s house on the night of April 14, 1865, armed with a knife and a pistol, ready to assassinate the Secretary, who lay recovering from a carriage accident. He carried with him a box of medicine and was posing as a messenger from Seward’s doctor with medication for the Secretary. When the Secretary’s son, Frederick, would not let Powell into his father’s bedroom, Powell clubbed the son with his pistol, which had misfired when he tried to shoot him. Powell left a bloody mess at the Secretary’s house, with several men wounded by his knife, though they would all live.
There is a great controversy about Mary Surratt. Was she a malicious, conniving Confederate die-hard who willingly helped the assassins by allowing them to meet at her boarding house, or an innocent lady who was pulled into the plot by her son’s illegal actions, of which she was unaware? Mary Surratt was the widowed mother of John H. Surratt, Jr., who was a Confederate spy and Booth’s right-hand man. She owned a tavern, kept by John Lloyd, in Surrattsville, Maryland, and ran a boarding house in Washington, D.C., which was a meeting place and safehouse for Confederate operatives. She was a staunch Southern woman wholly devoted to “the Cause”. In her book, The Assassin’s Accomplice, Kate Larson states that Mary was not only guilty, but that she had a “deep complicity in the murder plot” and that “…Mary’s actions defied nineteenth-century norms of femininity, piety, and motherhood, leaving her vulnerable to deadly punishment historically reserved for men” (jacket front). Mary certainly had knowledge that illegal things were going on in her house, and she obviously did nothing to hinder them or report them to the authorities. In response to her daughter’s stating, after the assassination, that she was afraid that John Wilkes Booth’s association with her family would bring them under suspicion, Mary replied, “Anna, come what will, I am resigned. I think J. Wilkes Booth was only an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to punish this proud and licentious people” (Larson 93). Mrs. Surratt’s guilt has been debated over and over again, and most Lincoln assassination scholars now believe that she was indeed guilty, though to varying degrees.
Dr. Samuel Mudd was a die-hard Confederate Secret Service operative and firm believer in slavery. He lived in Charles County, Maryland, and was a practicing physician. He shared Booth’s political views, and described the ex-slaves as “…ignorant, prejudiced and irresponsible beings of the unbleached humanity…” (His Name is Still Mudd. Steers 64). There has been much speculation about his role in the conspiracy. Many have tried to argue Mudd’s innocence, claiming that he was a good country doctor who did not know Booth. In his book, His Name is Still Mudd, Edward Steers, a respected Lincoln scholar, presents a strong case against Dr. Mudd, showing evidence that Mudd met with Booth three times before the assassination, one of those times introducing him to John Surratt, that Booth sent supplies for his escape to Mudd’s house, and that Mudd knew, contrary to his court statements, that it was John Wilkes Booth who came to his house in the early hours of April 15, 1865 (60-70).
John Surratt was deeply involved with the Confederate Secret Service as a spy and illegal rebel courier. He had many important contacts that could be very useful to Booth. Surratt traveled back and fourth between the United States and Canada, and was responsible for recruiting several men to assist Booth. Surratt organized and conducted meetings with co-conspirators at his mother’s boarding house, with her full knowledge (Larson 47, 52). He was, fortunately for him, not in Washington the night of the assassination. He fled to Canada shortly afterward, and was hidden by Confederate agents until he fled further, eventually being arrested in Egypt in the summer of 1867 (Swanson 375-377).
Edman “Ned” Spangler was a stagehand at Ford’s Theatre and friend of Booth. Many thought he was innocent, but there is evidence of his aiding Booth’s escape from Ford’s. He traded jobs with “Peanuts” Burroughs, a young boy who worked at the theatre, making him hold Booth’s horse while Spangler guarded a door the boy usually watched. He most likely stayed by the door to delay anyone chasing Booth.
The national reaction to the assassination could not have been further from what Booth had expected. He thought he would be hailed as a hero for slaying an oppressive tyrant (Kaufmann 398). He wrote in his diary, “ …I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for, what made Tell a Hero. And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat” (Kaufmann 400). Of course, most of the country did not know what had happened until at least April 15, if not later. The country was in an uproar. First, there was panic in Washington. After the news of the president being shot came the report of the assault at Secretary Seward’s, then rumors of attacks on the vice president. “The terror that gripped that city that night must have been absolutely incredible,” says a respected Lincoln scholar and author of American Brutus, Michael Kauffman. “The news of the president’s shooting was bad enough, but when you put that together with the attack on Secretary Seward, there’s no question that this is a conspiracy and this was absolutely explosive. How large was this conspiracy? Who else was going to be attacked? Were rebels going to come out of the woods in all directions attacking the whole city of Washington?” (History Channel film 23:25) The government, headed by Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, mobilized quickly to find the assassins. It was convenient that there were still soldiers everywhere ready to be given orders, but things did get a bit out of hand. The government started offering reward money to anyone with information that led to the capture of the conspirators, which actually did more harm than good. It brought treasure seekers who wanted the money and lied or confused the facts, or just made things up.
After leaving Washington by the Navy Yard Bridge, Booth and Herold made their way to Dr. Mudd’s house to get Booth’s broken leg set, a detour that may have ruined Booth’s escape. Scholars disagree about when and how Booth broke his leg. Many say it happened when he jumped to the stage of Ford’s Theatre, catching his spur on the decorative drapes and landing awkwardly, but Kauffman challenges this theory by presenting evidence that Booth’s horse fell during his escape sometime between Washington and Dr. Mudd’s house (Kauffman 272-274). After the stop, they moved on through Zekiah Swamp, across the Potomac River and through part of Virginia to the Garretts’ farm where Booth met his end and Herold was taken prisoner.
George Atzerodt, after wandering around the city half the night, went to Georgetown, was fed breakfast, talked with the pickets (soldiers on guard), who were searching everyone leaving the city, and headed to Germantown. He stayed overnight with a friend, then set off for his cousin’s farm where he was arrested on April 20. (Blood on the Moon. Steers 166-169)
Lewis Payne rode calmly away from Secretary Seward’s house, but did not know where to go. Herold, his “guide”, had left him, so he just stayed out of sight for a few days before returning to the only place he knew: the Surratt boarding house. He came to the house just as officials were questioning Mrs. Surratt, and both conspirators were arrested.
Dr. Mudd did not inform any authorities that the most wanted men in the country had been at his home until Sunday morning, April 16, when he asked his cousin to tell the soldiers who were in Bryantown, which was near his home. His cousin did not do anything about it until the next day, further delaying the manhunt. A sworn affidavit “stated that Dr. Mudd, ‘…confessed that he knew Booth when he (Booth) came to his house with Herold on the morning after the assassination of the President; that he had known Booth for some time, but was afraid to tell of Booth’s having been at his house on April 15, fearing that his own and the lives of his family would be endangered thereby.’” (His Name is Still Mudd. Steers 55)
John Wilkes Booth met his fate at the Garrett farm on April 26, 1865, when he was sleeping in the tobacco barn and the manhunters caught up with him. He refused to come out of the barn he and Herold had slept in, though Herold decided to surrender after the soldiers had set it on fire. Booth still had a Spencer carbine picked up from the Surratt Tavern during his flight, and raised it as if he were going to fight his way out of the barn when Boston Corbett, one of the soldiers, shot him through the neck. The soldiers dragged him out of the burning barn and laid him on the porch of the Garretts’ farmhouse, where he died a few long hours later.
The conspirators were tried by a military tribunal; it was a military offence, but many people thought that the tribunal had no authority over citizens. Booth had originally wanted to capture Lincoln to use as a bargaining chip to free thirty to thirty-five thousand Confederate soldiers to revive the South and win the war. He planned the capture and had the support of his conspirators, but it fell through when Lincoln did not attend a performance to which he was expected to go (Kaufmann, 184-185). Two conspirators, Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen, were heavily involved in the capture plot but backed out before the assassination. They were dissatisfied with the slow progress and unrealistic expectations, and when the capture plot failed, they left Washington. The government, namely the tribunal, did not distinguish between the capture and assassination plots, thus the capture’ conspirators were tried as part of the assassination (Kaufmann, 135).
Herold, Powell, Atzerodt, and Mrs. Surratt were sentenced to hang on July 7, 1865. Mrs. Surratt was the first woman ever to be hanged by the federal government, an act that inspired much controversy. Many thought that because she was a woman she should be spared. Lewis Powell “Never ceased to upbraid himself for seeking the shelter of her home, as in that lay the misfortune of her doom. He hoped, fervently, that she might be spared.” He said, “‘She at least…does not deserve to die with us. If I had no other reason…she is a woman, and men do not make war on women’” (Owensby 203-204).
Dr. Mudd, O’Laughlen, and Arnold were sentenced to life in prison, and Spangler got a six-year sentence. Two years later, an epidemic of yellow fever broke out, killing many of the jail residents, including Michael O’Laughlen and the prison’s head doctor. Dr. Mudd stepped in and worked to stop the epidemic, an act for which he received a full, unconditional pardon from President Johnson in 1869. Arnold and Spangler were also pardoned. John Surratt was found in Egypt in 1867 and tried, but as he could not be proved guilty he was released, and he toured, telling the story of the Lincoln assassination.
President Abraham Lincoln was not loved during his presidency. He was hated not only by Booth, but by many people. The Indianapolis Daily Sentinel wrote: “Mr. Lincoln and his party have been dominant as no set of men ever were before in a land peopled by the English race. They have governed twenty millions of their countrymen with a revolutionary freedom from the trammels of law” (Kaufmann 121). The Richmond Dispatch wrote: “Assassination in the abstract is a horrid crime…but to slay a tyrant is no more assassination than war is murder. Who speaks of Brutus as an assassin? What Yankee ever condemned the Roundhead crew who brought Charles I to the block, although it would be a cruel libel to compare him…to the tyrants who are
now lording it over the South” (Kaufmann 121). This kind of remark was common, even among the North, and they were part of Booth’s world, influencing his view of the president. But, Booth’s action “for my country” actually hurt the South; elevating Lincoln to martyrdom and catapulting Booth into history as a cowardly, insane murderer. The nation’s reaction to the assassination was to worship Lincoln as a martyr and condemn Booth as a cutthroat. Lincoln said “…do you know I believe there are men who want to take my life?…I know no one could do it and escape alive. But if it is to be done, it is impossible to prevent” (Blood on the Moon. Steers 103).
John Wilkes Booth was not insane. He was a brilliant, though perhaps misguided man who, together with his band of like-minded conspirators, did what he thought right to save his beloved South from the tyrannical rule of Abraham Lincoln.
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Works Cited
Booth, John Wilkes, John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper, Eds. “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me” The Writings of John Wilkes Booth. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Print.
The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth. Dir. Tom Jennings. New Video, 2007. Film
Kauffman, Michael W. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies. New York: Random House, 2004. Print.
Larson, Kate Clifford. The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Print.
Leonard, Elizabeth D. Lincoln’s Avengers: Justice, Revenge, and Reunion after the Civil War. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004. Print.
Owensby, Betty J. Alias Payne: Lewis Thornton Powell, The Mystery Man of the Lincoln Conspiracy. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1993. Print.
Smith, C. Carter. Prelude to War. Brookfield: Millbrook Press, 1993. Print.
Steers, Edward. Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Print.
--- His Name is Still Mudd: The Case Against Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd. Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1997. Print.
Swanson, James L. Manhunt: The Twelve-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. New York: Harper Collins, 2006. Print.
We arrived at the hotel at about 4:30 (TN time), checked in, and went to dinner. This is a lovely hotel, nice, it's big and clean...and they have a great breakfast! We ate dinner at Ruby Tuesday, which was amazing. I got a chicken parmisan pasta dish, and it was sooooo good! It was a thouroughly enjoyable evening. ;)
We left the house at 7:00 (GA time) this morning to get to the church. We had a sound check set at 8, which ended up being about 8:15. They have two services, a contemporary and a traditional (Presbyterian). The first service was at 9, the second was at 11:15, and we did just a short part of the show as a preview. Those went well.
After church we set up. Mr. P had gotten a new backdrop painted, and today was the first time we'd set them up. It took a bit of working out, but it looked great in the end. It's just a sheet of canvas curtain, but it looks like other rooms!! It's really great art. We used some of the church's chairs, plants, and little tables. Here's the church with and without our set:
After lunch (Ruby Tuesday, again!) we came back to the hotel for a little rest (or hair re-do, for me...it was awful this morning). The show went well. I remembered all the changes we had made and Mr. Payne was great (as always). I have a video of the first 17 minutes of the show, which I may try to get on here, but I don't know if it will work. I left the video camera at home (don't even ask...), so we had to go with all we could get on the still camera. The memory card filled up after 15-20 minutes, so that's all we got!
Anyhow, it was fun, and they had a reception with cake and punch afterwards! It was really nice. The coordinator/promoter for the event brought me the biggest bunch of red roses I've ever had in my life!! They are so beautiful!!
The most bizzare thing ever happened today. We needed a mic clip, and were asking around about how to get one, and one lady who was helping us asked mom where we were from. She told her we were from Nashville, and she said that she had just been to Nashville in January when she went to see her grandkids in Fiddler on the Roof. No Way. We were at the Hares' grandmother's church!! Taylor, Chris, and Eliza were in Fiddler. Yeah, it was super weird. Mrs. Hare was really helpful and nice to us. :)
So, we have to leave at 7:00 again tomorrow, so I had better go...
